I Want My Magic Back! - the Vancian Mage

Welcome to the first in a series of EN World subscriber articles entitled "I Want My Magic Back!" by Sigfried Trent. This series aims to encapsulate the old-school eclectic and wondrous feel of pre-4E magic in a 4E class.

One of the more dramatic changes made by 4E was the abandonment of the so called ôVancianö magic system. It was so named in honor of the fantasy author Jack Vance who inspired D&D spell memorization with his Dying Earth series. Instead of memorizing a series of single use spells from a large pool of possibilities, 4E wizards have a relatively fixed set of spells drawn from a far more limited pool. The range of what spells could do also shrank dramatically from near infinite possibility, to a more limited list of damage values and status effects focused mainly on combat with more utility-based effects shifted off into rituals.

The aim in this series of articles is to recapture that old-school magic feeling, but in a way that is mechanically compatible with 4E. Maintaining game balance is important, but we will be stretching the boundaries from time to time in order to give our new spellcaster flexibility in their repertoire and capture some of that wondrous and eclectic magic feeling of yesteryear.

In this first article we will establish the basic rules for acquiring and casting Vancian spells by detailing a new class: the Vancian Mage, complete with schools of specialization and counterspelling. Finally we will offer a taste of what is to come with a small handful of iconic spells.

a non-subscriber, sorry.... Any thoughts on this class? This is the single most desired class build for me. Good choice for a subscriber article: it'll probably get me to subscribe if people give it a thumbs up.

I just subbed to check this article out, but now when I try to open it it says the pdf is broken - Ive tried re-downloading it, just opening it and it keeps saying the same thing. The other subscriber pdfs seem to work fine - is it just the file or is it my computer? Im using the most up to date version of Acrobat.

- central message boards for all 3.x fans.
- a petition asking publishers to continue to print 3.x compatible materials.
- A list of all publishers who will continue to print 3.x compatible materials.
- and more stuff in the future

As I've said before, just take a 1e wizard and give him some extra hit points and some class skills and you have a Vancian mage that is mostly compatible with 4e. Sure, he won't have spells that shift and slide opponents but he'll have the volumetric fireball and Tenser's floating disc. And the other oddities found in 1e.

Joe Mucchiello, Head Honcho at Throwing Dice Games (Mostly defunct)
Priority One: Fatherhood.
Priority Two: Sanity.
Down on the list: seemingly real close to releasing a notebook essential. Haven't looked at it in... years? How did years go by?

As I've said before, just take a 1e wizard and give him some extra hit points and some class skills and you have a Vancian mage that is mostly compatible with 4e. Sure, he won't have spells that shift and slide opponents but he'll have the volumetric fireball and Tenser's floating disc. And the other oddities found in 1e.

The spells are where the magic lies of course.

We tried out some wilder ideas for the class and in the end settled on what is a fairly straight forward conversion. There are added trappings like the school bonuses, but it is very much a straight forward blending of vancian magic and 4E class structure. So what you propose is not all that far off.

But the spells are where the real meat and hard work lies. I'm looking at a huuuuge pile of them right now in fact.

We tried out some wilder ideas for the class and in the end settled on what is a fairly straight forward conversion. There are added trappings like the school bonuses, but it is very much a straight forward blending of vancian magic and 4E class structure. So what you propose is not all that far off.

But the spells are where the real meat and hard work lies. I'm looking at a huuuuge pile of them right now in fact.

As I said, I haven't tried this but for the most part I would port the old spells as close to "As Is" as possible. The obvious changes required are things like converting saving throws to the F/R/W. And inches to 10 foot increments. Casting times are all now just standard action, full action or "minutes". Most of those things can be converted on the fly. But stuff like tenser's floating disc don't really need all that much work.

I realize you are doing this for publication. But if I knew of a 4E DM willing to give it a shot, I'd love to show up to a game sporting my 1e PHB to play a mage who obviously fell through a dimensional rift of some kind.

Last edited by jmucchiello; Friday, 15th April, 2011 at 06:20 PM.

Joe Mucchiello, Head Honcho at Throwing Dice Games (Mostly defunct)
Priority One: Fatherhood.
Priority Two: Sanity.
Down on the list: seemingly real close to releasing a notebook essential. Haven't looked at it in... years? How did years go by?